The Blair Witch
Elly Kedward, better known as The Blair Witch, was an elderly Irish woman and one of the early settlers in the township of Blair (now called Burkittsville), Maryland. In 1785, after children complained that she would lure them into her shack and draw their blood with a sewing needle, she was tried as a witch and banished from the settlement. She was condemned to die of exposure and left deep in the surrounding Black Hills Forest, tied to an ox cart with just a shawl for warmth. This combined with her old age, meant that her death was almost certain. The oncoming winter was reportedly the worst winter the area had seen for seventy years. It was not soon after her supposed death that children began to vanish from Blair, prompting a panic among the townsfolk. Several infamous crimes involving missing or murdered children have occurred in the years since Blair was abandoned and then resettled as Burkittsville, with many unsettling reports attributed to the witch in the forest. 'Local history' Founded in 1734 as a fortress by an Englishman named Colonel Blair, Blair grew into a fairly remote township, surrounded by the Black Hills Forest and perforated by many creeks and streams. The native tribes did not settle or even venture into the Black Hills, believing it to be a dangerous place at night. 'Modus Operandi' The modus operandi of the Blair Witch was revealed when a trio of college filmmakers disappeared in the Black Hills forest while filming a documentary about her presence. The students had interviewed several people in Blair before departing, last being seen driving up a rural back road. Their recovered unedited footage offered insight to her behavior, and how she was able to elude detection for the duration of the event. She appears to take a keen concentration in anyone who enters her woods, although she historically preyed on children, a scarcity of victims may have diverted her hatred. Elusive and subtle, her methods have a prominent effect of raising tensions between her victims, causing them to lash out and undermine each others’ efforts of escaping the forest. As her victims observe various trinkets and phenomena throughout her forest maze, she escalates the severity of her attacks. She appears to select the first victim by cackling late at night, which is only heard by a select individual. After the trio discovered what appear to be seven children’s graves in the form of rock piles, she flings these rock piles at night to create disorienting cascades of noise. Next, the group stumbles upon a grove of hanging stick figures constructed out of various types of wood and wrapped with twine, possibly symbolic of her child victims, their spirits held in her effigies, solidifying her physical grasp of their bodies. This discovery escalates the night mind games, the Blair Witch then appears to reanimate these dead children to harass and frighten her victims, these children are heard to be giggling prior to shaking the tent. After driving the trio out of their tent, the children wreck their campsite but only ransack the belongings of the previously chosen victim. Category:Cinema Category:Supernatural Category:Undead